CHAPTER 14
ZOE
Zoe wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting, but it hadn’t been this. After breakfast, she and Nathan had gotten in his truck and driven out of town. He’d parked a few miles out by a hiking trail, and they’d walked to a river. Now, she sat on a log, her bare feet barely dipped in the icy river, while Nathan sat beside her. Their hands rested a few inches apart on the log, a fact of which Zoe was very aware.
"I used to come here all the time with my friends," Nathan told her. “We’d ride our bikes out and swim here.”
“Swim?” Zoe shivered. “The water is freezing.”
“We rural kids are tough,” Nathan said. He made a muscle pose with one arm, and Zoe laughed, tilting her head back, looking up at the blue sky through the branches overhead. She felt as free as if she were a kid herself, not an adult whose career and future were on the line.
“I saw a couple of kids riding their bikes in town,” she said. “I guess kids here still get around that way now.”
“Uh-huh.” Nathan nodded. “There are cell phones and tablets and all that, but a lot of things are the same as when I was a kid. Everyone still goes to the one elementary and middle school and high school, which also gets kids from a few neighboring towns. Most kids learn to ride bikes when they’re really young, and it’s more common to see them playing touch football or hide-and-seek than video games.”
“Islingburn seems like a really idyllic place to grow up,” Zoe said.
“It is. What about New York? How was it growing up there?”
“I liked it,” Zoe said. “There were always shows to see and restaurants to try and activities to do. I was never bored.” Of course, her childhood had taken a dark turn when her mother was diagnosed with cancer, but before that, Zoe had loved walking the Highline with her parents and having picnics in Central Park, going to Broadway shows each year on her mother’s birthday, and eating Thai and Ethiopian and Portuguese food for special dinners.
“That sounds nice, too,” Nathan said, though Zoe got the feeling he didn’t really mean it. They sat in companionable silence for a while as Zoe trailed her feet through the water. It didn’t feel quite so cold anymore. It was nice to take a little time to relax and do nothing much, after months of working at every opportunity. She could hear birds chirping above them and smell the soft scents of pine and soil and fresh air that she’d come to associate with Islingburn and with Nathan.
“Hey, I have a question.” She took her feet out of the water and rested them in a patch of sun on the riverbank. “Why does everyone call you Doc?”
Nathan chuckled. “It started out as a joke when I was a kid. People called me Doc because my dad was a doctor, and because I was always going around with a little toy stethoscope pretending to listen to people’s hearts and giving them band-aids. When I got older and actually became a doctor, it still stuck.”
“Wow. It’s wild that people here have known you since you were a little kid.” Zoe put her feet back in the river, wincing again at the cold. “Is it nice?”
“It is. It’s great because I get to watch children grow up, and people fall in love, and get married, and grow old together.”
Talking about marriage reminded Zoe of something she’d been wondering. “It seems like a lot of people our age in Islingburn are married.”
Nathan chuckled. “You’ve got that right. I’m basically an eternal bachelor here.”
Zoe was curious but didn’t want to push, so she gave a noncommittal, “Hmm.” Nathan must have realized that she was trying to ask for more information, because he continued.
“For me, my work has always been my priority. I don’t want to let my patients or my clinic down, so when I came back after my residency, I worked really hard and didn’t date much… even when people seemed interested. Now, it’s kind of too late. Most of the eligible women in Islingburn are already married, or at least in serious relationships. But that’s okay.” He nudged her with his shoulder. “I still like to focus on my career.”
Zoe smiled. “I understand that. I’m the same way. Well, not exactly — there are still plenty of single guys in New York City. But I prefer to focus on my career. I want to build something formyself, something of my own. And dating just isn’t that much fun.”
Even as she said that last part, though, Zoe wondered if dating someone like Nathanwouldbe fun. Now that they were seeing eye to eye and he’d stopped acting like she was trying to sabotage his career, she saw a different and very likeable side to him. He wasn’t like the guys she’d gone on dates with who liked to play games and talked only about themselves. She got the feeling that, with Nathan, what you saw was what you got.
“I’m not so sure about that,” Nathan said. “Dating can be fun… with the right person.” He looked at her with those soft blue eyes, and Zoe’s heart skipped a beat. When he said “the right person,” could he be talking about her? For a moment, the world around them stilled. Zoe could hear the rushing of the river below them and the rustle of the wind in the trees, but she was aware of nothing more than Nathan sitting just a few inches from her, his hand resting beside hers on the log, his warm eyes on hers.
Then, suddenly, he got to his feet, stepped over the log, and brushed off his jeans. Then he held out a hand to her, pulling her to her feet as easily as if she weighed no more than a feather.
“We can’t spend too much time here,” he said. “I’m showing you the Seven Wonders of Islingburn today, and we’ve still got four more to go.”
“The Seven Wonders of Islingburn?” Zoe asked as he started back down the trail.
“Exactly.” Nathan turned back to wink at her. “Last night, you saw the viewpoint — that was number one. This morning, we ate at JJ’s Diner — that was number two. This river is numberthree — but we can’t stay long, because we have a jam-packed schedule, and I think those kids want to take this spot over for swimming.”
He gestured at a group of preteens, the same group Zoe had spotted a few days ago, who had just pulled up and were parking their bikes against trees and racing each other to the river.
“Hey, Doc!” A few of them called. Some shot curious glances at Zoe, but they seemed far too excited to have fun with their friends in the water to pay her much mind.
“I can’t wait to see the other four wonders,” Zoe said as they walked back up the trail to the truck. “Is your clinic one of them?”
